When Crawford reached the roof it was still dark. The intense darkness
of a few hours ago had passed away, and it was possible on the roof to
see dimly the figure of the old man, the parapet, and the lead.
Towards each of the four corners of the lead the roof sloped gently,
and in each corner was a shoot leading to a pipe. In each of the four
corners, but so placed as not to obstruct the shoot wholly, and yet to
impinge upon it, lay a heap of something.
To each of those heaps the old man went in succession, moving the
heaps so as to make them impinge a little more upon the gutter. When
this was done he put down his spade, resting it against the parapet,
and leaned out of one of the embrasures.
All was still as death below. The darkest hour is the hour before the
dawn; the most silent hour is the hour before the reawakening.
It was raining heavily now. The old man did not heed the rain. His
eyes were turned vacantly towards the east. He was watching for the
dawn, not with eyes busily occupied on the dim outline of the huge
stores and warehouses before him. His gaze was directed to the east
simply because he knew that in the east the sun would rise, and that
as the light grew broad, and the top of the tower was overpeered by
lofty buildings on higher ground, he must, soon after daylight,
intermit his work on the roof if he would keep his secret.
When the gray had moved up in the east, the old man went his rounds
once more, spade in hand. The rain still continued.
When he had finished, he paused and leaned once more at the embrasure
he had formerly occupied. "I always," he thought, "take care to keep
the clay heaps about the same size. Rain is very good, no doubt. It
works off more than wind, except the wind is very high. The worst of
the rain is that when the clay gets soaked through and cakes, I have
to take it down to dry the minute the weather gets fine, and bring up
more sieved earth, for the wind would have no effect on the hardened
clay. At first I thought of putting all I excavated on the lofts; but
I found them so old, and weak and shaky, that I durst not trust them
beyond a little each. There, I have put all the large stones too big
to carry out and leave quietly here and there. There are tons and tons
of stones upon the lofts, and I am afraid the floors will bear very
little more. It would never do to overload the lofts and have the
labour of my two years all undone. The rain has stopped. It will help
me no more. Heaven send the wind. Here is the day."
It was now bright enough to see that the roof of the tower was covered
all over with a coating of thin mud, washed into streaks here and
there by the rain. In each corner lay a heap of clay. There were a
basket and a large pail also on the roof. The old man now began to
work energetically. He filled the pail with the mud, and in four
journeys down to the first loft, succeeded in removing all that
had been on the roof. Then he carried up four large baskets of
finely-sifted clay, and put one basket in each corner near the shoots,
so that those who had seen the roof of the tower from afar off the
previous day would notice very little, if any, difference, even with
the aid of a glass; for the nearest building that overlooked the tower
was a mile distant.
It was now broad daylight, and as the old man stood, his work
completed, all round him rose the muffled murmurs of awaking day. He
was wet through, but he did not care for this. He was used to it. The
rain and the wind were his great friends, and he hailed their advent
with delight.
It was plain what his object was. By day he worked in the base of the
tower, at which the ground stood now twelve feet higher than at the
time of the Great Fire, and twelve feet below this was the foundation
of the tower.
For two years Lionel Crawford had slaved in the daylight digging down
towards the foundation. He had a pickaxe and shovel and sieve. When he
had dug up some earth and rubbish, he sifted this on a piece of old
carpet and carried the sittings up to the top loft, there to dry and
become friable for the purpose of being got rid of on the roof.
Everything that would not go through the sieve, he carried out with
him, and dropped here and there as occasion offered, and the larger
stones, which he never put on the sieve at all, he carried up to the
lofts.
When he had wind instead of rain he stood on the tower in the dark,
and when all was quiet, threw away the sifted earth to leeward,
handful by handful. So that although he might thus in a night get rid
of several hundred pounds weight of earth, no trace whatever of it
appeared below the tower. When he was not helped by rain or wind he
could not dispose of more than fifty or sixty pounds weight a night,
without drawing attention to his operations. This quantity he got rid
of by throwing handful after handful out of the embrasure all round
the tower.
When he found himself on the loft where he slept he took off his wet
clothes, hung them up, and then lay down and slept.
It was late in the forenoon when he awoke. He dressed himself and went
down to what may be called the sitting-room. Here he found Dora awake.
"If it would amuse you, child," he said, "you may light the fire and
make the tea. It may be a novelty to you, and it will surely be a
novelty to me if you do."
Dora arose with alacrity and busied herself about the simple
preparations for breakfast.
"It is a long time," said he, "since I had anyone--man, woman, or
child--at a meal with me. Sometimes I go out and have my dinner or
supper or breakfast in the poor eating-houses around here; but that is
not often. I have learned to shift for myself as well as Robinson
Crusoe did in his time."
When the breakfast was ready, Dora said: "I am sure you will forgive
me, but the excitement and confusion of last night have made me forget
your name. Yet I remember that when you mentioned it, it seemed
familiar to me."
"Lionel Crawford, my dear; Lionel Crawford is my name."
"Crawford," she said, musingly resting her chin upon her hand. "I do
not know how I could have forgotten that name, for Crawford was my
mother's name before her marriage. It is not a very uncommon name in
England, is it?"
"Not very," he said. "There are several families of the name in London
alone."
They were now sitting at breakfast. No contrast could be much stronger
than that between the young, soft, gentle, beautiful girl and the
leather-hued, gnarled-browed old man. The bright sunlight fell through
two long, narrow windows high up in the thick walls of the tower. It
tinged the white hand of the young girl lying listlessly on the table.
It lit up from behind the rich curve of her cheek. It touched with
gleaming, grave bronze the outline of her dark hair. The old man sat
at the other side of the small table, looking with abstracted eyes at
the partly illumined head of the young girl opposite.
"Ay," said the old man, "Crawford is not an uncommon name. There were
several of us brothers when I was young. I was the only one that
married, and I believe all my children are dead by this time. Their
mother was sickly. She was everything to me while she was alive. No,
Crawford is not an uncommon name."
"We used not to consider it a common name in Canada," the girl said.
The sunlight was gradually encroaching upon the mass of dark hair.
"Ah," he said, still with the abstracted air, "you were in Canada. One
of my daughters when she was young, a child of fourteen or fifteen,
went to the United States."
"How strange," said Dora, shifting her position, and bringing all her
head under the influence of the summer sunlight.
"No," he said, "not very strange. A great lot of people from these
parts go to the United States, and, as I tell you, Crawford is not an
uncommon name."
"What I meant," said the girl, with a somewhat puzzled look on her
face, "was that it is strange your daughter, whose name was Crawford,
should have gone to the United States when young. My mother went to
the United States when young. She married there and then moved up to
Canada."
"And you tell me your name is Harrington, Dora Harrington? My girl's
name was Dora, too, and I heard she married a man named Harrington.
What was your mother's Christian name?"
"Dora was her name," said the girl, rising. "What do you think, sir,
of all this?" The girl was now standing, so that from crown to heel
the full sunlight shone upon her.
"It is extremely strange," said he, still in his absent-minded way,
"for I heard that my daughter moved up after her marriage." Suddenly
the old man's eyes fixed themselves upon the illuminated figure of the
girl. "I had not a good look at you before, child, and my eyes are dim
with overmuch study. Yes! As heaven hears me, there is a look of my
dead wife about you, child. Did they ever tell you you were like your
mother? Do you remember your mother?"
"I remember her very little, sir. I was very young when she died. They
told me I was not like her."
"Ay, ay. That is all in favour of my hopes, my child, for Dora was not
like my wife, and you are. Marvellously like! I seem to feel the coil
of forty years falling away from me." His eyes once more took the
abstracted, faraway look of the lions. "Forty years ago," he said, "I
was young and blithe, strong-limbed, and not repulsive as I am now. I
wooed my Dora then, not in smoky London, but amid the green fields,
and when the primroses were fresh with the early spring weather, and
all the air was sweet with moist dews and fresh songs of birds. The
leaves were all unsheathed, and each pulse of the wind brought a new
perfume of the season. My Dora!"
"And you think me like her?" said the girl. "Oh, if it should be,
sir!"
Suddenly the old man lost his abstracted look. He rose and stretched
out his arms towards her, looking keenly at her the while. "You are
she," he cried. "You are my Dora, my dead darling's grand-daughter.
For her own daughter, whose child you are, was like me, all said."
"Oh, sir," cried the girl, "it is too much happiness for me to believe
this true."
"I want some happiness now, my child," said he, "and no happiness
greater than this could come to me, for I am tired of loneliness. Come
to me, Dora."
The illuminated figure of the girl moved, passed out of the sunlight
into the gloom of the room--into the gloom of the old man's arms.